High Profile: John Michael Loh

Warrior In The Boardroom

General Combines Business Sense With Combat Savvy

July 12, 1993|By A.J. PLUNKETT Daily Press

John Michael Loh stood at the threshold of Gen. Colin Powell's door.

Loh, known as ``Mike'' to his friends and family and ``general'' to all others, had been summoned before the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was Sept. 17, 1990. The nation was readying itself for the Persian Gulf War.

Loh was second in command of the Air Force. His boss and friend, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan, a 32-year veteran, had just been fired for talking too much in public about the Pentagon's plans in the 6-week-old showdown with Iraq. Loh considered Dugan a great leader, a man worthy of respect.

Now Loh had to step into Dugan's shoes.

``Gen. Powell called me in and we had a little chat,'' said Loh, now 55 years old and the commander of the Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base.

``He said, `Mike, now, don't hunker down, don't get in a defensive crouch. You guys are doing great. This was an unfortunate incident, but please keep charging. Keep your head up and keep charging with the buildup and the planning for the gulf,' '' Loh said, pausing a moment, looking at his hands.

``So he kind of gave me a little pep talk,'' said the stocky former football player. ``That made it all feel a little better.''

With Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. military faced its toughest challenge since the Vietnam War. Loh had fought in that earlier war and had vowed that he and the Air Force would do it better the next time.

Next time had arrived and there were decisions to be made. Loh, the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and when necessary, President Bush, hunkered down daily in the ``tank,'' the fortified war room under the Pentagon, to talk options.

Did U.S. forces have enough air power? Enough ground power? Should there be an amphibious assault? A straight-in assault or flanking move?

Should U.S. forces begin an air war before or after all the ground forces were in and ready to go?

Those were the decisions made in the early months of the Persian Gulf War. ``It was a very intense period of time,'' Loh said.

But decisions Loh had made earlier, during the intensity of Vietnam and afterward, may have played just as important a role in the U.S. air war victory over Iraq.

John Michael Loh is part of a dying breed. He's a businessman and a warrior, a man who seems just as comfortable in a corporate boardroom as he does in the cockpit of the combat jet fighters he's helped design and buy.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1938, Loh became an honors graduate of Gonzaga, a Catholic boys' school that is one of the U.S. capital's most prestigious high schools. In 1960, he was a distinguished member of the Air Force Academy's second graduating class.

Eventually Loh was selected to attend the Air Force's elite fighter weapons school and invited to join an even more elite cadre of Air Force test pilots from the Air Force's Aerospace Research Pilot's School.

Instead, Loh opted for combat experience and volunteered for Vietnam. Leaving his wife, Barbara, and 6-year-old son Michael in the United States, Loh joined the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at Da Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, in October 1968.

It was in and around Da Nang Air Base, while his F-4 Phantom was being riddled with bullets but never downed by enemy fire, that he learned how not to use air power, he says.

He flew 204 missions, including some mid-air duels with Soviet-made MiGs, trying to stop supply shipments along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There were successes, but mostly there was frustration.

``I thought that our hands were tied behind us,'' Loh said.

The jets flew in harm's way every day, but they weren't allowed to strike the obvious critical targets, like major supply depots, in North Vietnam.

Loh and the other pilots could see supplies being loaded during the day, but had orders not to hit them until they were moving on the trail, which usually was at night. The F-4 Phantoms could do many things, but in the 1960s, the Phantoms didn't have the technology to strike accurately in the dark.

``We weren't nearly as effective as we could have been had we been able to go into North Vietnam and attack the supplies at the sources and had the critical targets like we had in the Gulf War,'' Loh said.

One thing Loh and the others could do during the day was hit caves where the enemy often stored tons of supplies.

On one mission, Loh was flying one of four F-4 Phantoms loaded with eight air-to-ground missiles. The jets had targeted several of the storage caves.

These were the days before ``smart'' bombs that could find their own way to a target from miles away. These missiles had to be guided in by the pilot. That meant flying low, straight and level, Loh said.

That also meant opening up a very vulnerable underbelly of an F-4 Phantom to the nests of anti-aircraft guns inevitably set up around the caves. All the missiles found their mark, damaging the enemy's supply lines. For his courage in the face of enemy fire, Loh earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.